"The rise of the dramas in the thirteenth century, and the rise of the great novels in a later period, together with their frank glorification of love and the joys of life, may be called the Third Renaissance"
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Hu Shih is trying to rename a cultural inflection point, not just describe one. By calling medieval drama and later long-form fiction a "Third Renaissance", he quietly argues that rebirth is not a one-off European miracle but a recurring, trackable shift in how societies authorize feeling. The provocation sits in his criteria: not new machines, not new empires, not even new metaphysics, but new genres that make love and pleasure speakable in public.
The pairing is strategic. Thirteenth-century drama moves emotion out of the court and into shared space; the great novel, later, turns inner life into a serious subject with room for contradiction, desire, and moral messiness. Hu's emphasis on "frank glorification" is a polemic against cultures that treat joy as suspect and art as moral instruction. He is staking a claim that aesthetic modernity begins when everyday longing stops needing permission.
The subtext is also political, in Hu's characteristically reformist way. Writing in a China wrestling with tradition, nationalism, and imported models of modernity, Hu wants a usable history: one where cultural progress is measured by expanded human experience, not by obedience to inherited codes. "Third Renaissance" smuggles in a manifesto for vernacular expression, popular forms, and the legitimacy of personal happiness. The line flatters drama and the novel as engines of social change because they teach audiences to recognize themselves - and once you can do that, deference gets harder to maintain.
The pairing is strategic. Thirteenth-century drama moves emotion out of the court and into shared space; the great novel, later, turns inner life into a serious subject with room for contradiction, desire, and moral messiness. Hu's emphasis on "frank glorification" is a polemic against cultures that treat joy as suspect and art as moral instruction. He is staking a claim that aesthetic modernity begins when everyday longing stops needing permission.
The subtext is also political, in Hu's characteristically reformist way. Writing in a China wrestling with tradition, nationalism, and imported models of modernity, Hu wants a usable history: one where cultural progress is measured by expanded human experience, not by obedience to inherited codes. "Third Renaissance" smuggles in a manifesto for vernacular expression, popular forms, and the legitimacy of personal happiness. The line flatters drama and the novel as engines of social change because they teach audiences to recognize themselves - and once you can do that, deference gets harder to maintain.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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